The Rudy Bruner Award is given to urban places that demonstrate the successful integration of effective process, meaningful values and good design.
Rudy Bruner Award winners are distinguished by their social, economic and environmental contributions to the urban built environment, and often provide
innovative solutions to our cities most challenging problems.
Awards include one Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 each.
Case studies of winners are published on line at www.brunerfoundation.org/rba/ and
in a book distributed by the Bruner Foundation.
2009 Selection Committee:
Mayor David N. Cicilline, Providence, RI
Michael A. Dobbins, Professor of Practice, College of Architecture, Georgia Tech
Mary Houghton, President, ShoreLine Bank Corp., Chicago
Grace E. La, La…

Hey ho, let's go, says Reconnecting America CEO Shelley Poticha, in the cover story about the growing national consensus that we need to rethink America's transportation investments. A separate article inside discusses the work of the Transportation for America coalition, which launched its Build for America initiative Oct. 15. In addition to a summary of recent news items, the newsletter also offers a look at recent and pending publications from Reconnecting America and Center for Transit-Oriented Development.
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With gas prices spiking and home values crumbling, the American dream of commuting to work from the fringes of suburbia has become an American nightmare. Many are facing a hard choice: Paying for gas or paying the mortgage. How did it come to this? NOW on PBS takes a close-up look at our inadequate transportation network. The show (click on photo to watch video) includes an interview with Gloria Ohland, Reconnecting America's vice president for communications.
This is the first installment in "Blueprint America," a year-long, PBS-wide series focusing on the nation's infrastructure. "Blueprint America" is an initiative of Thirteen/WNET.
PBS' Driven to DespairCTOD…

More than a blot on the landscape, urban sprawl is spreading rapidly into Switzerland's pristine alpine regions, according to a study released Oct. 8 by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The study, which used new techniques to map human settlement in the country, was carried out by researchers at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The Science Foundation has warned that in the absence of countermeasures sprawl will continue in Switzerland, where 176 people on average occupy every square kilometre.
Once uninhabited areas in the Jura and the Alps have almost completely disappeared. Researchers are proposing benchmarks to limit urban sprawl. But under Switzerland's decentralised decision-making system, the country's 26 cantons and 2,700 local authorities for the most part have independent decision-making powers when it comes to planning matters.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- According to a new nationwide survey commissioned by the HNTB Companies, more than 24 million Americans -- 11 percent of the adult population -- are using buses, light rail, commuter rail and other forms of public transportation more than they did last year. An even greater percentage of survey respondents, 16 percent, said they expect their ridership to increase in the coming year.
Nearly one in three Americans (32 percent) said their biggest motivator to choose public transportation over driving would be high gas prices. While conventional wisdom holds Americans would find it frustrating to give up the convenience of a car, the survey found the second most popular reason someone would choose public transportation over driving is more convenience (14 percent). Avoiding traffic (5 percent) was a distant third, followed by concern for the environment (4 percent).
The survey also found more than twice as many men as women (15 percent versus 7…

Developers building near transit would save money and those whose locations encourage driving would pay more under a new fee system being considered by San Francisco officials.
Since the 1950s, U.S. cities have calculated developments’ transit impacts by how long drivers must wait at a traffic light. San Francisco officials want to change the formula, basing impacts on the number of new automobile trips generated — something routinely calculated by developers. The result, proponents say, could encourage building in transit-heavy, walkable areas.
Currently, impact fees are often negotiated with developers on a case-by-case basis, leading to project delays. The new formula would be more straightforward for developers, easier for the public to understand and would speed up the planning process.
"City may ‘blaze a trail’ by building near…

DUBAI -- Ken Livingstone, London’s occasionally controversial but always colourful former mayor, has some advice for Dubai and Abu Dhabi: get rid of the cars.
“Huge financial centres” such as Dubai cannot rely on private cars for transport, said the architect of London’s congestion charge, speaking yesterday in Dubai as chairman of the World Architecture Congress, a programme running alongside Cityscape. “They need to have public transportation,” he said. “Dubai must recognise a modern financial district requires a majority of workers to use public transport.”
Cities around the world, he said, were scrambling to get residents out of their cars and, if Dubai and Abu Dhabi were serious about becoming important global cities, they must do the same.
"Mass transit is good for business, former London mayor says," The National, United Arab Emirates

UTAH -- One-third of north-Central Utah residents will want to live in a downtown setting or an area with urban amenities by 2040, according to the University of Utah's new director of metropolitan research. To meet that projected demand, Arthur C. Nelson said, 60 percent of all new residential development from Logan to Provo needs to be in or near downtown areas, or contained in suburban centers. The findings presented in the Wasatch Metropolitan Report indicate that there's an urgent need for planners, developers and government officials to work together to prepare for a shift from suburban neighborhoods to urban-style living, where residents can walk or use transit to get around as easily as by car.
Downtown could be the place, Deseret News

California will use a pot of transportation money as a lure to convince local governments to adopt smart growth policies that encourage more compact development and penalize sprawl. Under Senate Bill 375, the California Air Resources Board will provide regional targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The state will then use its $5 billion pot of transportation money to encourage regions to take into account meeting those goals in their planning process. The legislation also relaxes California Environmental Quality Act requirements for housing projects that met goals for reducing greenhouse-gas emission, giving homebuilders incentives to pursue high-density projects near transit.
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Jeff Wood, Reconnecting America's New Media Director and Chief Cartographer, collects news stories and blog posts about transit and transit-oriented development from around the country and posts them at TheDirectTransfer.com. Jeff then takes the top 10 articles in each of five categories and sends that out as Other Side of the Tracks email newsletter. The content of that email is then posted here.